Artists

Ceramic artist Pirjo Eronen

Pirjo was born in North Karelia, Finland, in 1958. Pirjo’s career has taken her from science to art. After completing her Master of Science -degree at the University of Technology in Helsinki, she studied art at Instituto Statale d’arte per la Ceramica in Faenza, Italy. Since 1998 she has been working in her own studio in Tolfa where she has also organized several workshops and courses. She has been active in organizing various cultural events in Tolfa. Her works have been exhibited in Italy, Finland, Norway, USA, Japan and Taiwan.

Painter Heidi Hirvonen

Heidi was born in Turku, on the West coast of Finland, in 1966. Heidi has been living and working in Rome for over 20 years. She completed her degree in Set Design at Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma in 1992. Yet, after her studies she became more and more fascinated with painting which gave her more artistic freedom. She began with abstract painting featuring the witches and shamans of Lappland. She continued painting, what she calls, ”fairies of souls,” figures, who communicate their messages in a shy manner. Later on she began studying the women around her - daughters, friends, strangers – focusing on their sensitive femininity as well as elements of ancient wildness, which – she feels - live in all women regardless of age. In her latest work she has focused solely on depicting characters. Her major aim is to transfer her deepest emotions onto the canvas through child/adult figures. Thus, her work can be seen as interpretations of inner emotions and emotional states. Heidi works with oil on canvas.

Painter Hannu Palosuo

Hannu was born in Helsinki, Finland, in 1966. Hannu studied art history at Università degli Studi ”La Sapiernza” and painting at Accademia delle Belle Arti di Roma from where he graduated in 1997. Since then he has had solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums around the world: Finland, Italy, Argentina, Spain, Germany, Monica, Japan, USA, Jordan and Syria.

In 2009 Hannu participated in the 53rd Venice Biennale as a representative of Italy. Also in 2009 the Accademia Internazionale ”Citta di Roma” invited him as honorary academician.

The core of Hannu’s artistic work lies in the interpretation of collective memory-images and of the spectator’s individual emotional states. He believes that art’s main function is to create an interaction between the work and the spectator. For quite a long time he has worked on the subject of Finnish forests as a national scenery, considering his own memory-images as well as those of shared national traditions. Like in his earlier work, in his current work he has abandoned the idea of narrative all together: he seeks emotional states in their purest, direct, and unmediated form. To avoid transferring his own interpretations to the spectator, he doesn’t give titles to the works; instead, he provides a number of suggestive and thought-provoking words. In this way he aims to trigger various emotional states in the spectator, both positive and negative, which can lead to new thoughts, ideas and experiences. He believes that to believe that, in this way, a more positive idea of art’s meaning in today’s society can be developed.

Video artist Anja Puntari

Anja was born in Germany, and raised in both Italy and Finland. She received her artistic education in Germany and a Master’s degree at Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti di Milano in 2009. Exploring contemporary society, Anja’s art focuses on people, images and their relationship with each other. Her starting point is the analysis of the culture surrounding her, and she works with pre-existing material: texts, both still and moving images, as well as audio materials. Most of her works offer complex anthropological repertoires or collections, imbedding also the codes of their origin. As an audiovisual artist, whose work is based on reworking existing visual material, Anja is interested in signification systems built into the images and their relationship with the surrounding culture.